On the Cusp of Everything
by mailroomy
Summary: Life flashes by. Spoilers for HBP. Snupin, and therefore slash.


Title: the cusp of everything  
Rating: R  
Warnings: unbetaed, possibly AU, re: Snape's childhood etc.  
Word Count: ± 2,400 words.  
Disclaimer: Not mine, I'm just borrowing them for my twisted means.  
Summary: life flashes by.

Note: a couple of days ago, elethian posted a HBP deleted scene, and I thought it was so sad, but didn't quite think so much about it. Then, at lunchtime, I was scrolling through the lupin_snape community to catch up with azure_rosa's extremely enjoyable story, I saw a prompt by littlewonder2 (flight of the Prince). And right about that time, King Creosote's Admiral came on my iPod, and suddenly this story took shape. It's just something written on the fly, on a whim, so it's not really something that can do justice to all those great inspirations mentioned above. But I thought to post it anyway, and is thankful to anyone who sets aside their time reading this. Comments and criticisms definitely welcome.

* * *

_1. fall a little way in_

"Mum?"

"You're awake?" she whispered, hoarse, her fingers on his brow, brushing a lock of hair away from his bleary eyes.

"Did I fall asleep?"

"What do you think?" she asked, her smile wavering a little. She struggled to stand, legs cramped from having him in her lap for such a long time. "Time to get up, little man."

He accepted her outstretched hand. "Is he gone?" he looked around, heard the clock ticking in the hallway, the street beyond.

"We'll have an hour or so before dinner." She was already by the sink, sorting herbs for dinner. He reached for the potato sack and chose a few medium-sized ones. Big ones were for Sunday roasts, he remembered.

He washed, peeled, and diced as his mother set up the pot. She passed him a few times, between the sink, stove, and larder, each time praising his even cuts, his steady hand, and he beamed up at her. She passed him the carrots and praised him some more, the leaves, the herbs, and his world shrunk to just the two of them in the kitchen watching the setting sun colouring the world blood red.

She placed her palm on his forearm, covering sunset-coloured bruise. "Does it hurt still?" she asked, voice low, and he could hear the soup cooking in the pot. She turned to give it a stir or two and he shook his head.

"Maybe just a little bit sore," he said when she looked pointedly at him, he was defenseless against her raised eyebrow.

"I'm sorry," she offered, retrieving bread and sliced a few and replaced the rest back in the bread box.

"Not your fault," he said, lowering his head, his shadow played darky over the cutting board.

"I'm still sorry," she said, standing behind him, her hand covering his hand holding the knife. He didn't realise he was holding the knife too tightly. He uncurled his fingers and turned to hug her waist.

"Not enough, though," he said. "For you." He hugged her tighter, laid his head against her stomach, heard her heartbeat through the flowery apron. "If you'll let me."

She laughed into his hair, hugged him around the shoulders. "My little man, my lovely little man," she whispered, and he was a bit ticked off she didn't believe he would. A little bit sad she thought him too small. Or maybe he was too small, unable to hold his father at bay at that.

The soup boiled, the front door opened.

"Go set the table," she said, pulling away from him, back to the stove, to the soup.

* * *

_2. a clout for my sins_

His mother wanted to be alone, often preferring silence over his company, so he walked the short distance to the playground.

There's the girl that made the air crackle almost the same way his mother did. And the girl's sister.

He watched her fly, fly to the sky in her swing. He watched her laugh. He watched her sister became anxious. And yet that girl with green eyes laughed, laughed and was happy.

One day he told Lily about witches and wizards, and forbidden words spilled out of his mouth like a river undammed. He thought as long as those words weren't spoken inside the house.

But Petunia told, and the senior Evans talked to the elder Snape to remind his son not to poison their daughter with stories of the absurd and the nonsensical.

With no dinner, a bruised cheek, he went upstairs and counted the days he would be taking Lily to leave for Hogwarts, this magical school his mother had whispered to him, when his father was away.

He had hoped that when the day arrived, his mother would join him. And he became sad not because of his hungry stomach or throbbing jaw, but because he knew his mother wouldn't join him.

"Mum?" he called out when he heard his bedroom door open. He turned to face the door, watched his mother standing just outside the door, the hallway light spilled into his bedroom, her shadow reached to him.

A piece of bread appreared in his hand, and he hid it quickly under his pillow. He looked up, but she had turned away from him, the door closing once more.

"He's already sleeping," he heard his mother's voice, again lying for him, trying to protect him but accepting nothing in return. He could hear his father's grumbling in the kitchen, swearing and shouting. He shut his eyes and bread tasted bitter in his mouth.

* * *

_3. admire all_

Hogwarts was more grand, more vast, more everything than anything he'd ever imagined. The spires, the green fields around it, the rolling hills beyond, the lake, the…

The heaviness in his heart left even for a moment, awash with hope. So here, finally, he could do, see, experience all those things his mother had been telling him. Things that had appeared in his daydreams, more real than that Houdini person he watched on television, more real than the magician that came to the Town Hall during christmas.

That old man with long white beard, he thought, was more real than St. Nicholas who appeared in Nativity plays.

The ceiling in the Hall, twinkling lights and blue clouds, the candles suspended in mid-air, the puzzle-piece staircases, the talking paintings and floating silver ghost dripping silver goo onto heavy flagstones so fine so polished under his shoes. The refinery around him, they overshadowed his faded robes, the best his mother could find on such a tight budget.

But darkness fell, and nights in Scotland were cold and rainy and gloomy and he was so very far away from home.

"Mum," he whispered at the ceiling, and felt so very empty, the hollow in his voice deafened him from within.

Lily Evans had gone a different way from him, her dorms inaccessible to him, her company would soon be inaccessible to him, too. She'd go a different way, with other boys, those that had taken a shine to her. Like him, inexplicably attracted to the feel of the air that thrummed around her.

Everything here was so very alive, yet…

He closed his eyes and wondered about that one purple house elf he thought he saw lurking around in the shadows. Maybe it was a trick of light.

Was the elf alone too? He wondered.

* * *

_4. mentioning things to the old so and so_

Years had gone past, but here they were, right where it had all started. Old haunts and hurts he thought he'd buried, resurfaced again. Once schoolmates, now colleagues, he wondered whether he could ever get used to this again.

Remus Lupin was older, more tired, and yet, more content. The Potter-spawn and his cabal of mischief-makers followed the other man around, happy to find a ready champion for their daredevil cause. And in exchange, Remus Lupin followed Severus Snape around almost everywhere.

Not in a stalkerish way, he was glad for that one reprieve. But appearing in front of his doors unsummoned, too early for Wolfsbane, too late to be proper friends.

Lupin also appeared next to him during late night rounds, sometimes. Thankfully keeping his peace when Snape chased errant students from their hiding places, as if they thought themselves smarter than him. Maybe one day, but not yet, he remarked to Lupin as they passed a small alcove he once used. It seemed that Lupin had used it, too, once upon a time, long ago.

Sometimes, the night would end in Snape's workroom, sharing a glass of firewhiskey or two, until Snape's traitorous mouth would drag up new bad memories and festering old wounds. Then would watch Lupin squirm and flinch and bid a hasty goodbye.

Sometimes he hated himself for continuously dredging up old, painful memories. But he found he couldn't bring himself to care.

He never thought of apologizing, and when one day Black, that one unremarkable thorn in his side fell through some piece of embroidery, words of regret died a permanent death on his tongue.

He watched their eyes, Lily's, Lupin's, staring sadly at him, sometimes accusingly, and he couldn't understand it.

At night, the eyes of everyone he couldn't save would stare at him from the ceilings, and he thought of going to the Headmaster, who kept a door open at all times, whose tea and biscuits and nonsensical words would provide him all the distractions he needed.

But he remained in his bed.

Sometimes, his house elf, that purple cast-off elf whose birth was a Brinjalberry accident, would appear by his bedside with hot tea, the way his mother made, tasted the way it tasted all those years ago.

And though he wanted, he refused to let sadness fall, and the rain outside Hogwarts was as heavy as always.

* * *

_5. a hairline scratch_

The post that Lupin left and was finally given to him bore the spectre of Lupin. And sometimes he met the spectre in the flesh. At Order meetings, behind alleyways trading information nobody could use.

Sometimes they would disappear together when everything seemed so hard to bear.

War, it seemed, provided the oddest of bedfellows, he reflected later.

Bedfellows indeed, he thought, shifting to look at the man sleeping next to him. He wondered how they got there. He wondered what the soon-to-be Mrs. Lupin would think, but of course neither of them would ever talk about these type of nights. Too sordid to tell, and there's nothing to tell either.

Just a way to scratch an itch, the down and dirty not to be undertaken by any self-respecting woman like Nymphadora Tonks (no matter how she'd like to convince herself that she's an Auror and a woman of the New Age, or a progressive thinking woman or some such). Anyway, Lupin would be too honourable to do that to her. And Snape was beyond caring.

"This means nothing," Snape tried to convince himself, blew smoke rings before extinguishing his cigarette. He left as Lupin continued to fake being asleep. Other times, it would be Lupin who would drag himself out of bed first, as Snape pretended to sleep.

One day, out of the blue, they came together. It was after a harrowing night on both side—him participating in a raid that had gone badly for everyone, Lupin who was unable, too late, to save another boy from being Greyback's victim. This time there's no broken body to mend, no half-fleeing soul to guide back to a half-empty shell. All's left to do for them was to choose a spot, secluded and far from the baddies' sniffing distance.

"Come away," Lupin had said, as they tumbled into bed, tired exhausted beyond belief. "Come away with me," Lupin urged Snape's robes to open, for buttons to yield.

"Let's," Snape had replied, nudging Lupin far enough for him to reach age-old scars, across the back, across the heart, waist, flanks, the back of the thigh. "Let's," Snape whispered, as Lupin dropped their clothes onto the floor. "Let's," Snape pleaded, stupidly, plaintively, pathetically.

"Tell me." _Lie to me_.

So they lied with kisses, lied with touches, with whispers.

Through their skin they told each other fantastical stories, of faraway places with enough plants for Snape to distil, and enough rabbits for Moony to catch.

Through their lips they made empty promises of eternity, of never being separated.

Their nails left bloody trails over old scars. _Carve a hairline scratch_.

Skin to skin, hearts aligned, never beating as one, always missing each other, half a heartbeat behind, a fractured canon. _Leave a mark on this granite heart_.

When dawn was almost at their door, having slept none all night, they looked at each other, head tilted to the side, face almost as bare and as young as they were before.

"Come away with me."

"Let's."

The last salvo of lies.

And they would straighten each other's clothes, the old-threadbare ones or the black severe ones, peck a see-you-later-kiss and turned their backs at each other.

Bid farewells, silently, in your hearts. _It's here I falter_.

* * *

_6. master of nothing at all_

He cursed Flitwick for choosing such a sombre tune to welcome the coming storm, he heard the eerie song echo, bouncing across stone walls, made their way down, seeping through small cracks of the flagstones.

He watched some older children danced in the pitter patter of the rain, unaware of the storm buffetting against the edges of the forest. He wanted to tell Minerva to let them dance their last dance, but that wasn't an authority he possessed.

He heard the Headmaster's pleas in his head. Heard his own voice answer back. _You know I'll do all that you asked of me. _He heard his own desperation._ Do not ask this of me_. He heard Dumbledore's arguments in the distant rolling thunder.

_Kill my own kin, betray my own heart, ask me anything_. He heard his own cries, unvoiced, unheard. _Just don't ask this of me_.

But Dumbledore would not be swayed, haring off to troubles unknown, to dangers unnamed, to certain death. In his hands. It was Dumbledore's wish, who was he to deny it? He, of course, was master of nothing around here.

The cauldron bubbled over, hissing and Snape knew he had failed in his experiments.

Not that it mattered. No one would need it anymore. And after today, failed experiments would be the least of his worries.

Lightning flickered, brightened his path, up from the dungeons, through the corridors, to the Tower.

His shadow, and the shadows of his memories chased one another in front of him, around him.

One thunder strayed too close and went off in a large blast, but he did not hear it. Did not hear a squeak and a scurry of a student out against curfew.

He felt it's no longer his authority to give or take points, belonged here no longer, for what he's about to do. He felt Dumbledore's presence, felt the air shift in a way that rolled his stomach and he was secretly thankful he didn't eat anything at dinner.

He climbed the winding stairs, found the scene already set for him, the lead actor. And yet... nothing at all.

He looked into those old determined eyes, blue like the sky, blue like absolution like damnation all wrapped into one.

The skies lit up.

---


End file.
